Installing Firmware in Line Printers

While every care is taken to ensure that these instructions are easy to follow and understand, occasionally, problems can occur which may affect the functionality of your printer. Not all printers can be upgraded to a newer version of firmware due to hardware constraints, and if you attempt to upgrade your printer without first seeking advice from Tally Technical Support (Tel: 0870 873 1555) regarding the suitability of you printer hardware to function with a firmware upgrade, you may find that your printer may not function correctly.

Tally Customer Services (Tel: 0870 873 1522) can supply an engineer to perform the upgrade for you and will advise you of any costs involved in performing the upgrade or for correcting a problem that you may have directly or indirectly caused.

After installing new firmware in your printer, you are advised that a series of calibrations are required to return your printer to good print quality and to negate problems that can be caused by an incorrectly calibrated printer. These instructions will guide you through the standard installation of firmware and re-calibration of your printer.

Table 1 shows a list of the line printers produced by Tally and indicates whether the firmware can be  installed into the printer's Flash ROM.

Having established that you can upgrade your printer with newer firmware, you now require a PC running DOS and not Windows. You also need a parallel printer cable to connect your printer to the PC LPT1 parallel port. (It must be LPT1.) And finally, you need the firmware on your PC. 

Connect the printer to the PC as described and power on while pressing a key combination (see Table 2) on the printer control panel and keep those keys pressed until the display starts to show a scrolling message. Release the keys as soon as you see the scrolling message. When the message stops scrolling, you will see a message similar to "Flash Download Ready".

At the PC, assuming that you have changed directory to the one containing the firmware file to install in the printer, type the following:

filename -p

where you should substitute the name of the file for the word filename. (for example, if the filename is 123456.exe then you should type  123456.exe -p). Note that there is a space character between the end of the file name and the - character.

Now press the Enter key on the PC keyboard. The PC will now expand the firmware file and dump the contents to the printer. At the printer you should see the display change to indicate what is happening and the Online led will flash slowly. At the completion of the firmware installation the display will change to either "Self Testing" or "Testing Hardware" depending on your printer model, and then restart. You may then see an error message "NVRAM Fault". If this message appears, press the CLEAR key to delete the message. Ignore any other messages that may appear.

At this stage you need to re-calibrate the printer and to do this you will need to enter the Tech Access menu. This menu is similar to your printer standard menu but with additional parameters and diagnostic tools. Please Note: If you change any parameters or attempt to use any of the diagnostic tools that this note does not mention, you could set up your printer wrongly and in extreme cases, cause damage to your printer. If you want to print out the list of parameters and diagnostic tools you can do so by printing the Help Menu before you exit the Tech Access mode.

First we enter the Tech Access Menu. This is performed by pressing the ENTER and Line Feed or ENTER and LF keys and keep them pressed until the alarm sounds (approx 4 secs). At this point the control panel will display "Tech Access On". 

On the T6215 and T6218 printers only, you will need to Press the ENTER and FF keys together until the alarm sounds (approx 4 secs). The display will then show "Fault Override On".

Now you need to clear the NVRAM so follow the procedure in Table 3 for T6215 and T6218 printers and Table 4 for other line printers.

On the T6212, T6215 and T6218 printers only, you now need to calibrate the platen. To do this proceed as follows:

Next on all line printers, you need to calibrate the Hammers so as to achieve good print quality. The method is similar for all line printers but the messages may differ. Table 5 holds the procedure for the T6215 and T6218 printers while Table 6 holds the procedure for the other line printers.

Now that you have completed the calibration, you need to exit the Technical Access menu and on the T6212, T6215 and T6218 printers, also turn off the Fault Override. To do this, simply power off the printer, wait 10 seconds and power the printer back on again.

Now you are ready to set up your printer for use in the normal manner.